[saalweachter]

Yeah, the failure of Reconstruction was sad but not really surprising in the greater context of the United States. Huge swaths of the history of the United States pretty much come down to defending slavery, de facto slavery, and maintaining a society which favors whites above others. One of the reasons for the Louisiana Purchase was the fear that France would free slaves in its territories, leading to unrest in the United States; one of the causes of the Texas Revolution was maintaining the rights of the American settlers to own slaves. Avoiding an "imbalance" of slave/non-slave states occupied the country for several decades before the Civil War, and prior to the 'War of State's Rights' numerous laws were passed abridging the rights of Northern States to shelter escaped slaves. After the Civil War, laws were passed in former slave states compelling blacks to enter into contracts with whites which were de facto slavery. Even today, prison labor and racially biased sentencing maintains de facto slavery. It wasn't until 84 years after the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments that Congress passed laws enforcing them. Even Progressive New Deal programs were racially biased; the original New Deal contained exemptions to Social Security (eg, for agricultural workers) to prevent large numbers of African Americans in the South from qualifying; this was a compromise between Roosevelt and Southern politicians, because he needed their support to fight World War II (Northerners were much more war-adverse and non-Interventionist, and more willing to sit out the war in Europe).

Trying to understand the United States and its history without knowing about the economics and social institutions of slavery is like trying to understand chemistry without knowing about atoms.

[einhverfr]

A few things that are particularly sad about it are:

1. We learned our lesson, given how we rebuilt Taiwan, Japan, and Germany.

2. We haven't learned out lesson given how the same rhetoric is trotted out by both parties today.

I swear... "creating jobs" is the single worst goal in American politics. Any time you hear it watch closely: both parties use it as an excuse to give rich people more money nad chain people to corporate employment....

[Retra]

As long as somebody is "creating jobs" you have nobody but yourself to blame for your hardships. It is like a pacifier to stick in the public's mouth.

[graycat]

Yes, but in my Southern US high school, in chemistry they did teach about the atoms but in history they didn't!